ABSTRACT

The modern city is a space that can simultaneously represent the principles of its homeland alongside its own unique blend of the cultures that intermingle within its city limits.

This book makes an intervention in Canadian literary criticism by foregrounding both ‘globalism,’ which is increasingly perceived as the state-of-the-art literary paradigm, and the city. These are two significant axes of contemporary culture and identity that were previously disregarded by a critical tradition built around the importance of space and place in Canadian writing. Yet, as relevant as the turn to the city and to globalism may be, this collection’s most notable contribution lies in linking the notion of ‘glocality’, that is, the intermeshing of local and global forces to representations of subjectivity in the material and figurative space of the Canadian city. Dealing with oppositional discourses as multiculturalism, postcolonialism, feminism, diaspora, and environmentalism this book is an essential reference for any scholar with an interest in these areas.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

Urban Glocality and the English Canadian Imaginary

chapter 2|16 pages

Embodying the Glocal

Immigrant and Indigenous Ideas of Home in Tessa McWatt's Montreal

chapter 3|14 pages

From Rowanwood to Downtown

The Torontonians and Girls Fall Down

chapter 4|14 pages

Dystopic Urbanites

Civilian Cyborgs in TransCanadian Speculative Fictions 1

chapter 5|18 pages

The Intrinsic Potential of Glassness

Narcissistic, Opaque, Organic Modes of Signifying the Urban in Vancouver 1

chapter 6|16 pages

The Refugee as Signifier in the Semiotics of the Glocal City

Michael Helm's Cities of Refuge

chapter 7|13 pages

Responding to Late Capitalism

The Mall